Labor Day's thunderstorms were past, but when Aardvark woke up early Tuesday morning, a light rain was still falling. He called Ronnie's phone to tell her it was a rain day, and to for God's sake stay home, or at least not bug him. He expected to leave a voicemail, but instead found she was already on her way to his place.

He'd planned to just add another 24 hours to his Labor Day, starting with about two more hours in the rack. "Well, what the Hell." He got out of bed, put on some clothes, and went out on the porch.

Yep, there she was, pulling up to his drive in her green Toyota. At least the rain had washed some of the dust off. Ronnie had lavished attention on his old truck. She'd turned it into a rolling art gallery. But her Corolla looked like it'd never known the joys of a carwash. He walked out to meet her.

When she got out of the car he whistled. "You look like you've been up about two days, Toots."

She shook her head, once, then held it still, one eye shut. "No ... no, I got some sleep."

"Huh. You got something else too." Ronnie was wearing a blue ruffle-tiered cami—not exactly work clothes. Aardvark'd spotted the edge of a big non-stick bandage sticking out from under her jogging bra, on her upper left breast.

"Yeah, a hangover. And new glasses." She adjusted them. Black plastic frames.

"Nice; Buddy Holly glasses. Hope you're gonna tell me they're safety-rated."

She rolled her eyes, then winced. "Ouch. Yes, Mother. Polycarbonate lenses. Even got little shields to go on the sides."

"Damn skippy." On her first day working with Aardvark, Ronnie'd picked up his rotary tool and blithely started grinding away on a stone—with no eye protection. That'd earned her a five-minute lecture, an obscene story about a one-eyed Shreveport prostitute, and a half-true story about what they used to do in the Navy to people who touched other people's tools without permission.

She was pale and looked about ready to pitch over. "Dude, can we go inside? Or do something besides stand out in the rain?"

"Right. You drive." He got in the passenger's side. "Since when do you say 'Dude'?"

"Heh. Dragon*Con. I must have heard 'Dude' about eight hundred times."

"When'd you get the ink?" He pointed at her chest.

"Oh!" Ronnie touched the bandage. "Yeah ...." Aardvark saw color rise in her cheek. "Last night. The guy said keep it on just two or three hours, but I put a fresh bandage on this morning, just to be safe."

"It's probably okay to air it out. If you want to hang out here, you can take your top and bra off. Won't bother anyone in this house."

"Maybe breakfast first? Oh, I got you something." She reached in the back seat and picked up a package.

"What is this?"

"It's a tee shirt. Your head goes there, and your arms go through these tubular structures. They're called 'sleeves'."

"Everybody's a comedian." He held it up. "Cool dragon. Thanks, Toots. C'mon, let's get you some breakfast. Get you squared away. Move 'em out!"

Ronnie took them through the drive through at the Chick-fil-A. It was about 7 in the morning. Aardvark had a flyer that entitled him to a free spicy chicken biscuit, but it wasn't good until 9:30. He complained about this for a while, but without heat. Just recreational bitching. He knew Ronnie tuned it out, but it was still fun.

They parked and ate. Aardvark took his coffee hot and black. He told Ronnie about how in 1978 he'd ordered coffee in a truck stop in Meridian, Mississippi late at night, from a counterman he knew to be in the Klan. "Gimme a cup, Peckerwood. I like my coffee like I like my men: strong, hot and black." He never did get his coffee that time, but after some property damage, he set a personal speed record on his Honda bobber, all the way to the Alabama line.

This one was a true story. He just left out the bloody parts. Got Klan blood on his jacket that time, and lost his favorite belt buckle.

"But luckily, Vinings is practically Klan-free these days. And the folks at the Chick-fil-A are actually very nice." He sipped his coffee. "Good customer service. No need for mayhem."

"Huh." Ronnie had stuffed an entire biscuit into her mouth.

With the wipers off, the windshield was saturated with raindrops. He told her, "Try focusing on the drops on the windshield, not on what's beyond them."

She cocked an eyebrow at him, washed down the last of her biscuit with coffee, and said, "Why?"

"Just humor me. I'm old."

She sighed and stared at the windshield. After a moment she took off her glasses. "That's better. Okay. I see many raindrops."

"Look at all the patterns." Aardvark pointed to the middle of the windshield. "That looks like a face."

"That's pareidolia."

"Perry who?"

"Pareidolia. The tendency of the human brain to form patterns out of random arrangements."

"That's what I said. Looks like a face. College kids with your fancy words."

"Okay. I used to lie in the top bunk when I was a kid, lie on my stomach and watch the raindrops on the window. That's like my most peaceful memory."

"Here, lay your head back." He rubbed her scalp. "Look at the raindrops; just let everything farther away then that go take care of itself. Don't worry about it. The raindrops enclose us, the raindrops protect us."

"You sound like that yoga lady on tv."

"Shut up. Now be serene. Just you and me, bein' serene in our little world. Sometimes it's good to reduce your world to a small manageable space."

"So my world is an old Toyota?"

"At least it's got a roof. You ever cross the country on a motorcycle?"

"Nope. I love my Toyota."

"You ever give your car a name?"

"No, why would I?"

"Because it's a vessel that carries you and keeps you safe. Oughta have a name."

"Fine. My car's name is Mr. Moto. Happy?"

"Happy as a clam. So, what's with the tattoo?"

"I just ... felt like it."

"Were you sober?"

"Pretty near. What's the big deal?"

"Just surprised, that's all. You ain't even got pierced ears, Toots, now you show up with a tattoo. Just tell me it's not some guy's name."

"Definitely not. I'm through with romance. You'll see what it is. Hell, here." She looked around. "With the fog on the inside of the glass and the rain outside, we're practically in private." She lifted up her cami and jogging bra, and slowly peeled off the bandage.

Aardvark took a close look. It was beautiful work; as good as he'd seen in Japan. It looked like a robot, but also like a graceful woman. Mechanical and sensuous at the same time.

"Okay, I give. What is it?"

She grinned. "That's the robot version of Maria, in the great silent movie Metropolis." She touched the image gingerly. "Still a little sore."

Aardvark blew gently on the tattoo. "Is that better?"

"Yeah; kind of cold."

"I can see that."

"Oh, stop it!" Ronnie covered herself. "Are you sure you're gay?"

"Now, I remember being gay, but it never hurts to check. That's a fine tattoo, Kid."

"Thanks." She leaned back. "You're right, 'Vark. Making the world little isn't so bad."

"Ronnie's World."

"Well, you can share it."

"Thanks."

They watched the drops for a while. Ronnie turned the radio to WRFG. The Morning Blues show was on. She played it low.

Aardvark leaned his seat back. It wasn't quite the level of inactivity he'd hoped for, but the morning wasn't going bad.

"Hey, Aardvark."

"Toots."

"I made a friend at the Con. This chick from New Zealand, Cherie. It's the weirdest thing; I sort of already knew her, because of the idiot I originally came to Georgia for."

"Life's funny."

"We hung out the whole Con together. We'd get to talking and forget about the panel we were going to. Missed the biggest costume contest. I guess I wasted half my membership fee."

"Does it feel like a waste?"

"No ... I'd say not. It's just, it was like I always thought it'd be like having a sister would be like."

"Well, great. You should hang out with her. Take a few more days off if you want."

"Really?" She turned and looked at him.

"Sure. One advantage of being raised Catholic is you don't have to have a Protestant work ethic."

"I'm not Catholic."

"Yeah, but I am, and I'm the boss."

"Thanks, really, but I don't know if I'll even see her again. Anyway she's in classes at Emory. Primatology, can you believe it? Makes me feel like a dummy. She's in grad school, and I barely got my BA. And we're the same age. I mean exactly the same age—isn't that weird, just by itself?"

"That's May 5, right?"

"May 5, 1986, we were born the very same day. Me in Newport News, her in Auckland, New Zealand. That's almost opposite ends of the world."

"Did you account for the International Date Line? She's probably a day older in real time."

"Well, she doesn't look it."

"How about that. Cinco de Mayo, 1986 ...." Aardvark thought. Where was he? "Oh yeah. I was in Canada."

"Why?"

"Brian's family. Didn't go as well as it might've."

"Oh, sorry. Anyway, sometimes you make a friend, but then you never see them except at Cons. So I might not see her for a year."

Her cell phone rang. The ringtone was some kind of choral song, with drums; he couldn't make out words. "What the hell's that?"

She stared at the phone, with a grin on her face. Aardvark couldn't remember her ever looking that happy. "Maori song. It's Cherie!"

* * *

Peg Teasdale squeezed herself into a corner of the vestibule, in one of the admin buildings on the Emory campus. She had a couple hours' leeway before she was expected back at Macaco. She'd watch through the window until the rain let up. She had a little more research to do here. She was going to get things back on schedule. Back on track.

But she couldn't go back out into the rain. It battered her, it hemmed her in like walls. It diminished her.

She'd never reached five feet in height. Engulfed by rain she felt even smaller, miniscule, melting like a sand castle. Rain around her like walls. The deepest puddles on campus were a few inches, but she'd stepped into one and felt water flowing past her knees, around her waist, rising up her chest, threatening to cover her face and drown her where she stood.

She'd run into the nearest building, her heart lurching, her hands shaking the way they did whenever there was a flash flood warning on the radio.

Once her Georgia concerns were attended to, she'd have to leave for good, and she'd find a place where it didn't rain and never flooded.

She stared at her hands, willed them to stop shaking. They did. It wasn't chorea, not yet. Just fear. In her mind, she squeezed the fear into a ball, crushed it in the mental fist she'd kept clenched since she was a child. She didn't know where the fear came from, but however many times it came back she'd crush it, she'd keep crushing it until it was dead.

She looked through the shifting patterns of water drops on the window. Shivering, she hugged herself, then forced her hands to her sides and focused her eyes beyond the drops, trying to ignore the rain, trying not to see it.

* * *

March, 1986

The cardboard box had originally contained a commercial mixer-cutter. Tonight it contained a child. Tiny; she looked younger than her 24 months.

The box had been sitting in the parking lot across from the Allegheny County Police Department for hours. Somebody should have seen it, but it was between two vans, under black unmoving clouds, and occluded by the rain coming down in cold grey sheets. Half a dozen county cops walked past it. Not much sound made it through the thick cardboard and the pounding rain; nobody heard the girl. She wore her voice out.

It wasn't long before dawn when the incoming desk sergeant pulled into the lot. He almost ran into the box; its sodden brown shape hardly showed up in his headlights. Cursing, he got out and took a look. His cigarette was quickly soaked and he spat it out. The box held too much water to be moved easily. Grunting, he squatted, got a grip and heaved it over. Frigid water and a child spilled out.

She wore a blue jumper, and a medical wristband containing a label with the typewritten name G., MARY MARGARET. She was alive.

Her hands were fists. She had never stopped beating against the inside of the box.